Mike Flynn

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Congress is in a month-long recess, but when it returns it will have just days to approve a spending plan to keep government open. That looming fight is very likely to turn on Planned Parenthood funding, with its half-a-billion yearly take from the federal Treasury.

Trump currently leads all national polling in the race. His lead has apparently increased even after he made off-the-cuff remarks criticizing John McCain’s war record. That he has gained support after those remarks should be a sobering wake-up call to the political class.

The report from BLS measures not just salary and hourly wage earnings, but the employer spending on benefits as well. It is the only report that measures the total compensation to American workers. Economists had expected a 0.6 percent increase in total compensation for the quarter.

The differences are small and within the poll’s margin of error, but will likely heighten anxiety among senior Democrats that Hillary is not their most competitive nominee for next year’s Presidential contest. In the new Quinnipiac poll, Jeb Bush edges Clinton in a hypothetical match-up. Clinton holds a one-point lead over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Biden, though, bests Bush and is tied with Walker.

A far better way to assist low-income workers struggling to raise a family on a minimum wage job is a boost in the Earned Income Tax Credit, which rewards those working. A job, even a minimum wage job, is still the best anti-poverty program. More than two-thirds of minimum wage workers receive a raise within the first year of employment.

A new poll from Monmouth University finds Donald Trump dominating the field in New Hampshire, thumping Jeb Bush, his nearest competitor, by a 2-1 margin. Trump has 24 percent support of Republican primary voters, while Jeb Bush has just 12 percent.

In the new CNN poll, 53 percent of Republican voters feel their views are not represented in Washington. This is nearly double the sentiment among Democrats and far higher than that of overall voters. These Republicans are most supportive of Trump, want to see him stay in the race and can even envision him as the party’s nominee.

Few national political figures have embraced the full kaleidoscope of leftist policy proposals as eagerly as Sanders and O’Malley. The panel was even moderated by a celebrated leftist journalist who is also famously an illegal immigrant. Only a drum-circle and piped-in scents of patchouli were missing from what ought to have been a leftist dream-team of Presidential politics. It’s no coincidence that outside of the coasts and urban areas, the Democrat party is simply not competitive in most of the country.

The veterans sampled in the overall poll is a small group, with a likely significant margin of error. That said, Trump’s generally good standing with veterans even after his remarks about McCain reminds us that veterans are not monolithic, one-issue voters. According to the poll, “veterans are divided on whether Trump owes McCain an apology.

While the Senate will consider a number of amendments to the legislation this weekend, the most politically revealing provision offered will be resurrecting the New Deal-era Export-Import Bank. The charter for the federal lending agency expired at the end of June.

There is the superficial one, that dominates media coverage and mostly gauges name recognition and current press mentions. Then there is the mostly hidden, but far more important, contest for the hearts and minds of the Republican super-activists, those supporters who will provide the critical human infrastructure as voting nears.

Conservative activist group Citizens United has released a new poll of its membership, which surveyed over 4,000 activists across the country. Just 2 percent approve of the job Congress is doing. More than 90 percent want their Member of Congress to replace current House Speaker John Boehner.

The proposal would almost double the current minimum wage in just five years. The move by Sanders will put pressure on presumptive frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who is under increasing threat from the far-left base of the party.

“Hillary Clinton’s numbers have dropped among voters in the key swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. She has lost ground in the horserace and on key questions about her honesty and leadership,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll in a release. “On being a strong leader, a key metric in presidential campaigns, she has dropped four to 10 points depending on the state and she is barely above 50 percent in each of the three states.”

Trump’s surge in the polls makes perfect sense. The Republicans in Congress have been battered into a meek, poll-tested, sand-box of talking points. They take no real steps towards actual opposition because they are scared of what the media and Democrats will say about them. You can’t win the White House by simply denying the other team a chance to score, however. A “prevent defense” will always fail against an aggressive offense.

Even in 2015, it would perhaps seem odd to have a foreign national moderate a discussion between two candidates for the U.S. Presidency. These are not fringe candidates, mind you, but statewide officeholders who have a plausible claim to be the nominee for the Democrat party. Journalist Vargas is an illegal immigrant.

The presence of so many leftist activists in town for the conference no doubt spiked attendance for Sanders speech. Its hard to imagine an aging hippy ticking through a list of left-wing policy issues attracting anyone but the most addicted political junkie. That said, Sanders’ draw and the overall combative tone of the NetRoots conference presents an emerging challenge for Democrat party regulars.

More important for the candidate, though, is that almost 60 percent of Republicans admire his “guts.” When asked about Trump’s statement that illegal immigrants from Mexico are bringing drugs and crime into the country, 70 percent of Republican voters say he is “basically right.” Almost half of all voters, 44 percent, also agreed with Trump’s statement.

Almost 60 percent of voters say that Hillary’s natural instinct is “hiding the truth.” Unsurprisingly, Republicans and Independents are more likely to hold this view, but 30 percent of self-identified Democrats also believe that Hillary has a troubled relationship with the truth.

The change of venue is the latest sign that Sanders, a self-avowed socialist, inexplicably, is generating enormous interest among the hardened progressive left of the Democrat party. The apparent surge in support, or at least interest, for Sanders says more about dissatisfaction within the Democrat base with frontrunner Hillary Clinton than the iconoclast from Vermont. At his best moments, Sanders seems more like a popular college radical than elder statesman of the party.

In 2008, Clinton’s early campaign made a strategic miscalculation by spending too little on the primary and largely wasting what she did spend. This year, she is spending far more money and, while it may not be wasted, is geared for the post-primary campaign. Like the first few months of the 2008 campaign, Hillary is assuming the Democrat nomination. We will know soon whether that assumption finally proves correct this year.

Conservatives may well ask what was the point of Republicans winning the Senate. The Export-Import Bank was created by FDR to provide taxpayer-backed loans to foreign companies to purchase American products. Perhaps the idea made some sense in the depths of the worldwide Great Depression, but any rationale for the program has long since been confined to the history books.